Tag Archives: economics

Good News in the January Employment figures : MSNBC Headlines :” Jobless rate drops to lowest level in almost three years.”

The market rises. Democrats celebrate. Republicans quake.

Those not too lazy to scroll to the bottom of the page, and click a few links to verify this pablum find something different.

In the second to last of around twenty paragraphs, the reader finds this:

Even with the January jobs gain, the employment market still faces a long road back to full health. The nation has about 5.6 million fewer jobs than it did when the recession began in late 2007. And there are still 12.8 million people out of work, though that is the fewest since the recession ended. An additional 11 million are either working

part-time but would prefer full-time work, or have stopped searching for jobs.

The article quotes the President as saying there remain, ” too many Americans who need a job.”

He is entirely right on that. Clicking around the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one finds this under “Employment Situation.”

After accounting for the annual adjustments to the population controls, the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) rose in January, while the civilian labor force participation rate held at 63.7 percent. (See table A-1. For additional information about the effects of the population adjustments, see table C.)

For a similarly low employment-populatoin ratios haven’t been seen since the Carter years.

Discourage enough people, and make it easier for those not inclined to work, and indeed the unemployment rate will decline. While there is little doubt that a Republican administration in a similar pickle would also be crowing, one wonders how the media would be pitching it.

As for the jobs that are being added, I would posit that the improvement reflects the resiliency of the business cycle, which, while distorted by statism, hasn’t been entirely crushed – yet.

…but not an end to the impulses that led to the latest, or soon to be latest, green disaster.

The Volt is likely soon to join distinguished company: The Edsel, Gremlin, Pinto, and of course, the Yugo (Image: Sodahead)

GM said it would sell 10,000 of its signature electric, the Chevy Volt, a key component of Obama’s “Green Jobs” push. Reuters reports that final sales for 2011 were “around 8000.”

The spin never quite stops. While mathematically, it’s fair to round up, the actual figure of 7,671 looks even worse. On the bright side, that’s 329 massive,toxic batteries that will not have to be disposed of one day.

Although its hard to track down totals( Neil Cavuto on Fox wasn’t quit able to), a large portion of 2011 Volt sales are to fleet buyers, prominent among whom is GE. No surprise here, as GE has long since ditched its role of a quality American producer of electrical and industrial goods, from light bulbs to locomotives, in favor of the security of being a government favored enterprise. Municipal governments have also been buyers in Michigan, Florida, where federal funding was used, New York City, Las Vegas, and of course the Feds are in for a few as well. A more exhaustive search might well come up with further examples.

GM’s agreement to build Volts in China leads some to think that production might be offshored entirely, while others think that line production will soon end, with volts being made only to order,

Some commenters on an earlier posthere on the Volt defended the government’s

The Volt has done better than this 70s Soviet Electric, with a total production of 47.

role in electric vehicle development by citing spin offs from defense research and development. They have it backwards. The internet wasn’t invented so I could write this post; GPS wasn’t developed so amateur hikers who couldn’t run compass courses didn’t get lost. The government developed these technologies in carrying out its constitutional mandate to defend the nation. Further developments in the private sector brought the technology to the consumer, and government uses privately developed technology as well. The drone operator using a joystick is utilizing technology developed for missile control, game playing, and industrial uses, a continuous cross fertilization going back many decades.

German prisoners near Giesen, 1945. Remarkably advanced engineering. There was nothing like it in America. Yet the disciplined German collective lost .

The German National Socialists did have a vision of prosperous citizens zipping about the autobahn in “people’s cars”, but the Volks with its air cooled engine and the advanced road network were developed for military purposes. The Russians didn’t put the first Sputnik up so I could one day watch American cable here in Bali, but to develop their military communication and spying capability.

Soviet irrigation projects dried up most of theAral sea, ending a productive fishery.

The Soviets wanted to build a Socialist man. Stalin thought he could change the drainage of Eurasia, and Khrushchev made the deserts bloom, and then added the Aral sea to the expanding sands. The Volt springs from a softer, but quite recognizable collectivist impulse

This is the hubris of the Left. It waxes and wanes, but never changes. The Left sees the world as it is and then tries to reshape it, without reference to human nature, laws of economics, or even physics. Obama and Chu want us driving electrics, and bring the influence of government to bear, so that we who need instruction, learn, and follow the proper path.

A momentary triumph of the collective.

But while our leaders work from a collectivist impulse we are not yet a collective.

Reality never matches the collectivist ideal.

Consumers in the old East Bloc had a limited choice of goods, many of which no one wanted in any case. In the United Sates, the administration and GM cannot force the Volt on us, and have instead used borrowed dollars for subsidies to supplement moral suasion in trying to induce consumers to want the car. One would hope that the President and his faction would learn from this, but given the history of the Left, this is unlikely. Rather , should this administration continue in power, more likley, while compulsion is not yet possible, incentive may be replaced with penalty. Rather than a bayonet, six dollar gasoline.

President continues his walk, stops in a convenience store, buys some stuff, and then walks back to the congress and tosses out some change, 100 billion dollar coins, aiming handfuls of them at his buddies, but everybody gets some.

Not yet a full-fledged recall….but according to a widely quoted AP story( which, curiously, I was unable to find on the AP site or as a search result), GM, while insisting the cars are safe, will buy them back from worried customers, and may consider recalling the entire fleet.

So, we have a largely State owned company, the new General Motors (Us Treasury along

with the Canadian and Ontario governments). Well, there are the unions, and the bondholders from the old GM( the stockholders were hung out to dry), in other words a union of government, labor and capital, in classic Mussolini style corporatism.

And this company manufactured a vehicle using a power train technology that the government chose.

I'm not going to do the math, but with less than 7000 units sold so far(2011 first model year), and future propects bleak, I bet they could have just bought all their customers a Hummer, fueled it for the vehicle's life, and still saved a big chunk of change.

The technology choice was an act of faith: a good work in service of the state religion of Global warming, Anthropogenic GlobalWarming, Climate Change, or whatever they decide to call it next week.( I guess: how do you charge the thing if you don’t have any coal or natural gas to run the power plants; we wont talk about nuclear or hydro)

The result was predictable. A politically correct ( a term with origins in the old Soviet Union) automobile fails in the market place. There is no third way: command and control can only work in economies where you can command people to buy stuff.

Really, the old East bloc way made more sense They just made crappy cars because that was the best they could do.

We aren’t lost yet: there were never any recalls for Trabants or Moskiviches.

A Volt goes for $41,000(OK, there is a $7500 tax credit that may apply, for which all the suckers who don't itemize pay), but wouldn't you rather have one of these at around $37,000?

Whether there is a timely perestroika in the U.S. before statism calcifies, is another question.

“Not now — then! Ask ’em when they’re running out. Ask ’em when there’s no heat in their homes and they’re cold. Ask ’em when their engines stop. Ask ’em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won’t want us to ask ’em. They’ll just want us to get it for ’em!

“Three Days of the Condor” 1975

Have you ever, perhaps a night,alone thought. The oil, just effen take it ?

No war for oil? Why not? In the event that an enemy cut our supplies, would that not be an act of war? Roosevelt’s cut off of strategic materials to the Japanese was a major boost to the war party in Tokyo, and the impetus behind their drive south too Southeast Asia.

Of course, they were the bad guys.

The oil cartel has in the last four decades effected a transfer of wealth against which the plunder of the New World by European empires pales.

The irony is that the Middle Easter fields were discovered and developed by the Americans and the British. These deposits then became the sovereign wealth of states mostly either created from the former empires, or under the influence of the metropolitan countries – and the US.

Why do we put up with it, Because we are not the bad guys anymore, There was no War for OIl:so far, not one drop from Iraq. Kuwait did pay off its much smaller rescue Iraq says to shove off,.

But we don’t just take stuff anymore, Instead we fool around with windmills and CAFE, put obstacles in the way of gas piplines from Canada, stop drilling in the Gulf, and subsidize domestic methanol when we could get it cheaper from Brazil. If( or when) one day an oil producing enemy, such as Iran and perhaps a radicalized Sauidi Arabia( which would have a differnet name) did interdict our supply a casus belli would exist.

The Eastern fields of Saudi Arabia are particularly vulnerable and could easily be secured. Iran’s production is localized as well. Either of these would be, more than enough production to break the cartel.

So do I, in such a near armageddon, advoate coming in like PIzarro and Cortez?

No; Oil could be pumped and paid for, at a fair market price, the monies perquisite in escrow for return after a just peace,

Because we are good guys.

If we weren’t, we would also calculate the monstrous overcharges from the OPEC Era and take that as well, inflation adjusted upwards. I wonder if there would be any oil left at all by the time they paid us back.

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